Indeed, you can consider multitasking as a big multithreaded app. However, this processor still lacks per core perfomance like all other PhenomII processors compared to Intel's. You'll still get lower framerates when you game, or slower fps in x264 for the same number of cores, etc. That's why it's "only" good for multithreaded workloads.
I dont play games at 800x600 low detail settings ;-), and no i dont own or plan to have crossfired 5970 ;-).So FPS is gonna be pretty much the same across PH2/Core2/i5/i7 or a dual x58 with two westmere 980x on them ;-).
Its been established LONG ago that for good game experience you need enough ram, fast IO subsystem a DECENT cpu and the faster the better GFX.
I dont see myself with a timerclock staring at the screen showing me encoding passes in x264, it rarely matters to me if encode is done 10, or 20, or 30% faster, it matters tho that i can fireup many concurrent workloads and while theyre being done in the background i could do some other stuff smoothly too.
Of course if someone has a render farm, or some tough computational workload with a steady input of data ,it matters A LOT how quickly it can be done, but thats 99% of time server grade stuff.
And comparing it to 980x isnt sensible.Look at the price, 3-4x times less, platform backwards compatibility (again less costs).
We all know and agree that 980x is faster, and i7 4 cores are faster per core.But in the real world 980x can afford select few, i7 4c are great but still costs more and come with a high cost platform.And turbo function is a nice and welcomed upgrade too.
And remember that i will be putting it on a 2 year old mainboard on ddr2, to have that option is just F-ing nice ;-D